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THE HONOR OF THE CHURCH 



THE HONOR 
OF THE CHURCH 

BY 
CHARLES R. BROWN 

Dean of the Divinity School 
Yale University 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO 



3*s 



Copyright, 1922 
By SIDNEY A. WESTON 



Printed in the United States of America 



THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS 
BOSTON 



&PR \ I 1922 



©CU659711 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Honoring the Church 1 

II. Building the Church 19 

III. Belonging to the Church 37 

IV. Recruiting the Church 49 

V. Adapting the Church 65 

VI. Unifying the Church 81 



HONORING THE CHURCH 



I 

Honoring the Church 

IT is considered very good form and very 
good fun in certain quarters these days 
to maul the church. It is a chilly day 
when some light-hearted newspaper reporter 
does not make merry in a column or two over 
what he regards as " the faults and failures 
of the Protestant Church.' ' He is careful 
not to attack the Roman Catholic Church, for 
reasons which we all understand full well. 
And it is a very cold day when some minister, 
like an ill-bred bird, does not foul his own nest 
by criticising and even caricaturing the 
church which originally gave him his oppor- 
tunity to be heard. In my judgment it is 
poor business all around. It gives aid and 
comfort to the enemy. It amuses some, 
wounds many, and helps none. I wish to 
protest against it, and to say a word here as 
straight and as strong as I know how to make 
it for " the honor of the church/ ' 

We have been told in trenchant magazine 
articles, written by ministers who were old 
enough to have known better, that if the 
pastors of the churches had not been " so 
benignly dumb," — I am quoting here from 

3 



The Honor of the Church 

an article in the Atlantic Monthly — " so 
hopelessly inefficient/' the kingdom of God 
might have been coming with power and 
great glory. We are informed that millions 
of the choicest young men in the land are 
almost beside themselves " in their eagerness 
to embrace Christianity/ ' but for some subtle 
reason, known only to the adept, " they are 
bristling with hostility " toward the one 
organization which for nineteen centuries has 
done more than all other organizations put 
together to make that Christianity a power in 
the thought and action of the world. It is 
all somewhat puzzling to the plain man who 
walks with his eyes on the stars and his feet 
on the solid earth. 

When I read these slashing criticisms in 
glowing magazine articles, I always wonder 
where the essayists have been. My own 
personal observation of the church in this 
country has been neither brief nor narrow. I 
am fifty-nine years old, and I have attended 
church all my life. I was born in Virginia, 
grew up and went to college in Iowa, received 
my theological training in Boston, held three 
pastorates covering twenty- two years in Ohio, 
Massachusetts, and California; and for the 
last eleven years I have been living in Con- 
necticut. And in all that time I have never 
heard, nor heard of, a minister preaching 'a 



Honoring the Church 

long evening sermon against the evil of drink- 
ing sweet cider/ ' or threatening people with 
the wrath of God because they wanted to 
hear Edwin Booth in " Hamlet/ ' or 
11 causing nine-year-old boys to suffer tragic 
torment because they thought they had 
committed the unpardonable sin, and so 
were lost. ,, If these faults which the maga- 
zine articles allege against the church were 
common and characteristic, surely I would 
have bumped against them sometime, some- 
where. 

The critics, with great vigor in their lit- 
erary style, clamor for " courage, self-devo- 
tion, fidelity to duty, unconquerable cheer, 
loyalty, willingness to die for one's cause " 
— quoting again from another article in 
the Atlantic Monthly. They do well — the 
idea is altogether sound, though in no sense 
new. And where are these qualities of cour- 
age, devotion, fidelity to duty, and all the 
rest to be found at their best and in largest 
measure, not alone under the stimulus of a 
great war, where of necessity the demand 
for them will be limited to a brief period, 
but in the give and take, in the wear and 
tear, of a whole lifetime? 

Here again my observation has not been 
altogether narrow. For six years I was a 
member of the Central Labor Council, made 



The Honor of the Church 

up of the representatives of all the Labor 
Unions in a large city. It met every Mon- 
day night, and during those six years I came 
to know intimately those men who were 
striving to better the conditions of their 
own class. I was a visitor for two years for 
the Associated Charities in one large city, 
and for ten years a member of the Board of 
Directors of the Organized Charities of an- 
other city. I have been in close touch with 
the resident workers of well-known social 
settlements, East and West, rejoicing in 
and aiding in the good work they were doing. 
I have been for eleven years a member of 
the faculty of Yale University, and during 
that time I have preached and lectured and 
given addresses in one hundred and twelve 
colleges and universities. I know person- 
ally large numbers of these men and women 
who are giving unstintedly of their best to 
the great work of education. 

And as a result of my observation I am 
ready to maintain against all comers that 
nowhere on earth is there to be found so 
large and so constant a measure of self- 
sacrifice, of Christlike spirit, of unflagging 
devotion to the principles of the Sermon on 
the Mount, and of patient fidelity to duty 
on the part of those who walk the ways of 
common life, as in the church of Jesus Christ. 

6 



Honoring the Church 

I will back the pastors and the faithful mem- 
bers of these churches for sheer moral ideal- 
ism against any group of people which can 
be brought forward from any other one 
organization to be found in our American life. 

When the great missionary societies, for 
example, want young men and young women 
of sound health, trained intelligence, social 
grace, and Christian integrity, to go forth 
to all the spiritual frontiers of earth and there 
display these qualities of " courage, devo- 
tion, loyalty, willingness to die for one's 
cause " during all the working years of their 
consecrated lives, where do they get them? 
They get them, of course, from the churches 
where these young people have been con- 
verted, nurtured and furnished with that 
spiritual impulse which carries them into 
this chivalrous service. The missionary 
boards would never think of looking anywhere 
else for them. This sort of material is not 
produced anywhere else. It cannot be found 
in some lovely grass plot of spiritual produc- 
tiveness lying quite outside of the much- 
maligned church of Christ. 

The social settlement, with all its excellent 
qualities, if called upon for candidates to 
swelter on the Congo, or to shiver in Alaska 
or Labrador, or to face and relieve the dirt 
and the squalor, the disease and the vice of 

7 



The Honor of the Church 

the crowded sections of the Qrent, or to 
brave the attacks of Boxers in China, or the 
horrors of Armenian massacres, would be 
swift to say, " It is not in me." The labor 
union would speedily add, " It is not in me." 
This army of the choicest young people we 
know, enlisting for a warfare in which there 
is no discharge, going out to minister to 
people whose faces they have never seen, 
whose names they do not know, whose lan- 
guage they cannot as yet speak, but whose 
needs they have already made their own in 
warm, unselfish sympathy, comes forth stead- 
ily from those churches which have, according 
to the critics, become " so feeble " — I 
quote again — u as to have no ethical en- 
thusiasm for anything except negative ideals 
of individual behavior." 

The same sound principle holds in the work 
of the kingdom here in our own land. I 
was president for many years of the Cali- 
fornia Home Missionary Society. It was 
part of my duty to travel among the wide 
wheat ranches and the lumber camps and 
the mining towns of that far-flung state. 
I have been in the homes and in the churches 
of the self-denying men and women who are 
rendering there an honored service as am- 
bassadors of Christ. Their labor lacks some- 
thing of the romantic picturesqueness which 

8 



Honoring the Church 

attaches to the work of those who are in 
foreign lands with people of alien race; but 
for heroism, unselfish devotion, patient 
fidelity, and sympathetic interest in the 
needs of their fellows, I know of nothing 
finer in American history than the action of 
those home missionaries as it bears upon 
laying the foundations of the Republic on 
solid rock rather than in fleeting sand. I 
am confident that the home missionaries 
of our country would yield as many bushels 
to the acre of courage, fidelity, loyalty, and 
willingness to die for their cause as any body 
of people to be found anywhere. 

It is not expedient for me to glory or to 
think more highly of my fellow Christians 
than I ought to think. The churches of 
our day show no celestial perfection. They 
cannot in the nature of the case be without 
spot or blemish or wrinkle, or any such thing, 
so long as they maintain the cheerful habit 
of receiving human beings into their mem- 
bership. They are made up of men and 
women like ourselves, people whose mental 
and spiritual limitations are instantly appar- 
ent. And in almost every church there is 
given unto us " a thorn in the flesh, a mes- 
senger of Satan to buffet us," lest we should 
be exalted above measure. But when the 
returns are all in, the sheep and the goats 

9 



The Honor of the Church 

told off and counted up, is not the church 
of Christ about the divinest thing we have 
here on earth at the present time? Name 
any other organization which can spell it 
down in moral idealism and in useful conduct. 
It is the one institution we have which is 
bold enough to accept the social ideal, not 
piecemeal in specialized lines of effort, but 
in its entirety. It has the moral courage to 
look up into the face of the Infinite Perfec- 
tion of God and say, " Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done here on earth as it is done 
in heaven.' ' 

Have we not had about enough of this 
wholesale abuse of organized religion? It 
gives great satisfaction in certain quarters, 
but they are not the quarters to which the 
poor world looks for its spiritual help. Might 
we not take a hint from the ethics of the 
medical profession? The physicians are not 
11 stabbing each other awake " — I quote 
again from the Atlantic Monthly. They are 
not bringing discredit on their profession by 
casting widespread aspersions on their fellow 
practitioners. In dignified fashion they do 
sometimes warn the public against the 
methods of ignorant and unprincipled quacks. 
But that is not a case in point. The rank and 
file of the Christian ministry is not made up 
of quacks. It is upon the regular practi- 

10 



Honoring the Church 

tioners that these essayists (themselves oft- 
times ministers of Christ) are bringing re- 
proach by ill-advised and unjust arraign- 
ment of their brother ministers. I commend 
to their serious consideration the usage which 
prevails among the apostles of the healing 
art, so closely akin to our own cure of souls. 

Now having made my protest against the 
thoughtless, reckless impeachment of the 
honor of the Protestant Church in America, 
I would like to say three plain words about 
the church life which we are set to lead. 
There are churches, alas, which cumber the 
ground. They are fruitless branches cling- 
ing in desperate fashion to the True Vine. 
It is high time they were either purged or 
cut off. There are men in the ministry who 
by reason of their listlessness and inefficiency 
are actually doing more harm than good. 

The young men in the theological schools 
are to be trained and made more competent 
as leaders in the church of Christ. The 
pastors in active service are to show them- 
selves " approved unto God, workmen that 
need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the 
word of truth/ ' Let them all stand ready 
to ' endure hardness as good soldiers of 
Jesus Christ," accepting loyally and gladly 
all the disciplines, physical and mental, 
social and spiritual, which may mean added 

ii 



The Honor of the Church 

efficiency. The end they seek is " charity 
out of a pure heart and a good conscience, 
and a faith unfeigned/ ' with no sham, pre- 
tense or make-believe about it. Let them 
watch, then, in all things, and make full 
proof of their power to serve aright the needs 
of their fellow -beings. 

We are to make the church of Christ inter- 
esting. Jesus Christ himself is interesting. 
Lift him up anywhere so that people can see 
him as he is, and he draws men to him. The 
gospel he preached is interesting. For spiri- 
tual insight and for beauty of form, for 
strength and delicacy combined, and for 
sheer human interest, there are no words to 
be found in print which surpass the words 
of Him who spake as never man spake. 

Religion is interesting. The human soul 
in its relations to God in that great moral 
order which enfolds us; the human soul in 
its relations to other lives in that great social 
order which enfolds us; the human soul in 
its high privileges of self-realization through 
all of those aids, human and divine, which 
religion offers in the fullness of their power 
— there is no other single aspect of life 
which can compare for one moment with all 
that for interest. In the face of the challenge 
which all this offers to our best powers at 
their best, the man who allows his preaching 

12 



Honoring the Church 

to become dull, prosy, unappealing, lifeless, 
ought to be cast out of the synagogue as a 
heathen man and a publican. He has denied 
the faith. 

When Charles A. Dana was editor of the 
New York Sun, he was a man in a thousand 
in a newspaper office. He was, as one of 
his honored associates has said, " a man of 
scholarly attainments, of inborn refinement, 
and of supreme ability to transfer his great 
knowledge to every column of his newspaper.' ' 
He believed that the newspaper is a great 
educator, greater as an educator of the masses 
than the pulpit or the lecture room, because 
it talks to such a wide audience. He believed 
that its influence, read as it is by old and 
young, by boys and girls as well as by men 
and women, should be thoroughly clean and 
wholesome. Then on that secure founda- 
tion he was intent on building the structure 
of a paper that people would take and read. 
1 Make the Sun interesting," he was forever 
saying to his staff, " make the Sun interest- 
ing. The people will not read dull, poky, 
porous stuff — hoot it out of the place.' ' 
Let ministers and laymen join hands to make 
the church interesting, and people will come 
to it; and what is still more to the purpose, 
they will be profited by their coming. 

Let the church be made vital. We are 

13 



The Honor of the Church 

not dealing mainly with Rehoboam and 
Jeroboam, who are safely dead and buried. 
We are not concerned chiefly with the mum- 
mies of Egypt which Moses may have seen 
when he was an unwilling resident of the 
Nile Delta. We are dealing with men and 
women, young men and maidens, boys and 
girls, who are more or less alive. We are 
set to make them alive at more points, alive 
on higher levels, alive in more interesting 
and worthy ways. We are the servants and 
followers of Him who said, touching his own 
fundamental purpose, " I am come that 
they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly.' ' Whatever else 
it may or may not be, the church which bears 
his name must be vital. 

We cannot have a congregation of intelli- 
gent Twentieth Century Americans on their 
toes over some skilful defense of a particular 
mode of baptism or over some particular 
theory as to the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper. We cannot send " a thrill of life 
along their keels " or " launch them out 
into the deep " by warming up some old 
doctrinal squabble which may have caused 
men to grow red in the face in the time of 
Athanasius. We cannot stir them to action 
by brandishing before their eyes the moral 
shortcomings of the Hivites or the Girga- 

14 



Honoring the Church 

shites. Their reaction to such appeals will 
never be such as to break out the ends of the 
pews. But the sorrows and struggles which 
those people are undergoing now, the duties 
and temptations which they are facing now, 
the opportunities and high privileges which 
lie before them now in this intricate and chal- 
lenging modern life of ours — all that en- 
nobled, enriched, and glorified by being shot 
through with the truth and grace of the gospel 
of the Son of God, will bring them out of their 
chambers, rejoicing as strong men to run a 
race. It is of the utmost importance that 
the activities of the church in its worship 
and in its work should deal with that which 
is vital. 

Let the church be made religious! This 
might seem to go without saying. Alas! 
would that it did! There are churches — 
you have seen them and I have seen them — 
which do not by the sort of service they offer 
make men aware of their souls, aware of God, 
aware of their high privilege in him and of 
their capacity to wear increasingly his like- 
ness and image. In those dead-and-alive 
churches there is not, as men used to say of 
the service conducted in the city of London 
by Frederick Denison Maurice, " the sense 
of something which is not of this world/ ' 
The whole atmosphere of the place is of the 

15 



The Honor of the Church 

earth earthy, and the poor attendants at 
that church seem to be buried in it, beyond 
the hope of a resurrection. 

Let me quote a single paragraph from a 
recent popular and widely read novel. The 
man who is speaking is a soldier who has 
come back from the Great War, wounded 
and maimed for the rest of his days. He is 
blurting out to his chum what he feels in the 
depths of his own soul : 

11 What the world needs is the old God! 
Man cannot live by bread alone, the churches 
tell him; but the man says, ' I am living on 
bread alone, and I am thriving on it.' Yet 
away down in the crypt and abyss of every 
man's soul is a hunger and a craving for other 
food than this earthy stuff. And the churches, 
instead of reaching down to him what he 
wants, invite him to dancing, and picture 
shows, and ' you're a jolly good fellow/ and 
1 religion is a jolly fine thing and no spoil- 
sport,' and all that sort of latter-day ten- 
dency. Damn it " — I am quoting the sol- 
dier and I must use the words he used — 

Damn it, the man can get all that outside of 
the churches and get it better. He wants 
light. He wants God. The preachers call 
it ' making religion a living thing in the lives 
of the people.' ' Lift up your hearts to 
God,' they say; but there is no God there 

16 



Honoring the Church 

that a plain man can understand to be lifted 
up to." 

The church above all else is a place to dis- 
pense religion. It is a place of prayer. It 
is the house of God. It is the gate of heaven. 
It is the high office of the church through its 
appointed services of worship to lift men 
into the sense of kinship with the Eternal, 
into a feeling of co-operation with their Maker, 
into the joy of participation in an august 
spiritual enterprise where God, the Father, 
is above all and through all and in them all. 
To know, to do, and to enjoy all this is to be 
religious. 

Let the church be made interesting! Let 
the church be made vital ! Let the church be 
made religious! The Lord will add daily to 
that church people who are being saved. 



17 



BUILDING THE CHURCH 



II 
Building the Church 

WHEN the Master was here he set 
lame men on their feet and bade 
them walk. He opened the eyes of 
the blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf, 
causing men to see and to hear what they had 
never seen nor heard before. He sometimes 
fed the hungry. He occasionally gave an 
address to a crowd in the open air. But his 
main interest during the last two years of his 
public ministry is indicated by those familiar 
words addressed to Peter, " I will build my 
church/ ' 

He was building a church. I do not mean 
a stone structure with a spire on it — one can- 
not build a church out of stone, or boards, or 
bricks. With that material one can only 
build the building where some church may 
meet. The church itself is built out of men 
and women, young men and maidens, boys 
and girls, who have seen in Christ what Peter 
saw in him, who have declared their loyalty 
to him as Peter declared his loyalty, who are 
undertaking to live in that same high mood. 
Out of that sort of material and on that 
foundation, he will build his church. 

21 



The Honor of the Church 

When I speak of the Master focussing his 
efforts on the building of a church, I am not 
thinking of anything intensely ecclesiastical. 
He had almost nothing to say about polity 
or ritual or creed statement. When men 
undertake to discuss those questions which 
have so often divided Christians into con- 
tending groups, they do not find much ma- 
terial for their mighty arguments in the four 
Gospels. Jesus was bent upon gathering a 
group of men and women — it was never a 
very large group in his day — whose minds 
were saturated with his ideas, whose hearts 
were steeped in his spirit, who were striving 
to live the life as he manifested it and im- 
parted it. 

He wrote no books; he created no endow- 
ments; he led no armies. He never under- 
took to change the form of government 
under which his people lived, but he did 
build a church. Then he stood back, ready to 
stake the whole future of his cause upon what 
that church would do and be. "I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it." Its influence was 
to be like leaven permeating the whole lump 
of human life. It was to go into all the world 
and disciple the nations, baptizing them 
into a new spirit. 

The Master recognized the plain necessity 
22 



Building the Church 

for organized effort. One cannot sing an 
oratorio all by himself, I care not how splen- 
did his voice may be. He must merge his 
voice in a chorus of voices. One cannot 
render the Fifth Symphony, or the Ninth, 
by himself, I care not how well he may play 
on some single instrument. He must blend 
his efforts with those of an entire orchestra. 
The modern achievements in commerce and 
in manufacture have only been made possible 
because men have learned to unite their 
forces and to act together. The same sound 
principle holds when we come to sing the 
Lord's song and to do the Lord's work. It 
can only be done where men and women 
come together, are agreed, and begin to act 
in concert as members of the body of Christ. 
It might seem as if all that would go with- 
out saying. Alas, no! Would that it did! 
We live at a time when in many quarters 
organized religion is held in contempt. You 
will hear light-headed and light-hearted 
people speak in glowing terms of Jesus Christ, 
and then with the last half of the same breath 
speak contemptuously of the church. We 
are often told in breezy fashion that it does 
not matter the least bit whether one belongs 
to the church or not, that it does not matter 
whether he has been baptized or takes com- 
munion, — that on the whole it is rather 

23 



The Honor of the Church 

better, perhaps, if he has not done any of these 
things! You will hear young men with 
some measure of moral aspiration declaring 
themselves after this fashion: " I want to 
do good in the world. I want to live a 
Christian life. But I will not belong to any 
church. I will not make any professions. 
You see, I do not want to get my lines crossed. 
I propose to stand out free and clear, living 
my own life and doing my own work in my 
own way." 

It might be well to remind all such people 
that this was not the attitude of Christ him- 
self. The church of his day does not seem 
to have been so sincere, so well-behaved nor 
so well stocked with humane impulse as the 
church of our day, yet he belonged to it. 
He was a churchman. It was his custom 
to enter the synagogue on the sabbath. He 
observed the festivals of the Jewish church. 
He utilized the opportunities it offered for 
moral effort. His last act, almost, was to 
celebrate the Passover with his disciples and 
to take the bread and wine of a new covenant 
as a member of the church. He did all this 
because his life was ruled by judgment and 
conscience. 

We were at war the other day with Ger- 
many. Suppose you had met some patriotic 
young fellow in those days in civilian dress, 

24 



Building the Church 

but with a gun on his shoulder! Suppose 
he had told you that he was on his way to 
France. " But where is your uniform?" 
you would have asked. " To what company 
do you belong, to what regiment ?" Then 
he might have answered in this vein of modern 
individualism, " Oh, I do not belong to any 
company. I do not wear any uniform. I 
do not make any professions about being a 
soldier. You see, I do not want to get my 
lines crossed. But I love my country and I 
am on my way to France to see if I cannot 
pick off a German or two on my own account/' 

His folly would have made you laugh. 
No competent government on earth would 
have allowed him to go. Had he been 
allowed to go, his unorganized presence there 
in any considerable numbers would have been 
a hindrance to the work of the regular troops. 
The man of sense fights always with the 
army. 

Now we are at war with the evil of the 
world, and it is no child's play. We see lined 
up against us not only huge masses of flesh 
and blood headed wrong; we battle with 
1 principalities and powers, with the rulers of 
darkness in this world and with spiritual 
wickedness in high places." The very vague- 
ness of the apostle's language indicated his 
sense of something mysterious, ominous, 

25 



The Honor of the Church 

deadly, standing over against us. In the 
face of all that opposition to the divine pur- 
pose, the victory for righteousness cannot 
be won in any haphazard fashion, each man 
going his own gait and way. The winning 
of that victory calls for discipline and con- 
certed effort on the part of all those who 
believe that the spirit which comes not to be 
ministered unto but to minister is Lord of 
life, and that before it every knee should bow. 
At this very hour the Head of the church 
is reaching out for members of his body. 
He would have us belong to him as my hand 
belongs to me. He is building his church 
out of such offered material. 

The words of the Master emphasize also 
the value of fellowship in a common task. 
The Christian does not grow in isolation or 
in a vacuum. He is a plant which the 
heavenly Father planted and he is meant to 
bear fruit. He must of necessity have soil 
and atmosphere and climate suited to his 
growth as a plant. The soil where the 
Christian thrives, the atmosphere which he 
recognizes as his native air, the climate 
which best ministers to his unfolding, are all 
to be found in the fellowship of the Christian 
church as they are found nowhere else. Here 
is the house of his habitation, the place where 
the divine honor dwelleth, the atmosphere of 

26 



Building the Church 

devotion and the company of those who are 
wont to call upon his name. 

The longer I live and the more closely I 
study those efforts which really count, the 
more clearly do I recognize the importance 
of putting one's life into some institution 
which will continue when the man himself 
is gone. The influence of the free-lance is 
short-lived, I care not how sharp a lance he 
may have been or what a merry time he may 
have had for his brief hour upon the stage. 
The work which will add up large in the Day 
of Judgment is the work of the man who 
merges and blends his efforts with the efforts 
of other men in such a way that something 
results which is massive, corporate, enduring. 
The whole body fitly joined together and 
compacted by that which every joint sup- 
plieth becomes the dwelling-place of those 
forces which are to realize the divine purpose. 

" I am doing a great work," a young man 
once said, " I cannot come down." He was 
laying bricks. But every brick went into a 
wall with thousands of other bricks. The 
wall surrounded a city as its chief defence. 
The city was Jerusalem, the capital of that 
race which took the right of the line in the 
moral leadership of the world for centuries. 
When we remember that the Jews wrote this 
book of final values for all who would live 

27 



The Honor of the Church 

nobly and that the Son of Man was born a 
Jew in Bethlehem of Judea, we feel that the 
young man did not overstate it. To lay 
bricks in the wall of a city like that was a 
great work. 

" I am doing a great work," some man says 
now. He may be teaching Greek or geome- 
try, but he is building his ideals and principles, 
his methods and aspirations into the unfold- 
ing lives of a whole generation of young 
people who are just coming into their own. 
He is making himself an essential part of an 
institution which is to set its seal upon the 
life of a nation. 

" I am doing a great work," some man says 
who is striving to transform business into a 
profession, with its own high standard of 
ethics, its own worthy objective. He is 
striving to make his own business a social 
utility, a place for the expression of good- 
will, a local contribution to the solution of 
that problem of industrial organization which 
is so vast and so intricate. 

11 I am doing a great work," some man says 
in a lonely, struggling little parish in the 
country. He is preaching sermons, calling 
upon the sick and making friends with boys 
and girls. But in doing all this he is strength- 
ening the line of that institution which 
reaches out into all the cities of the land and 

28 



Building the Church 

into all the lands of earth seeking to estab- 
lish the rule of the divine spirit in the lives 
of men. He has made stronger in its reach 
and grasp the work of that institution whose 
influence will continue long after he has been 
gathered to his fathers. 

There is something inspiring in that sense 
of participation in any far-reaching and au- 
gust enterprise. I have felt it in many parts 
of the world touching this interest of public 
worship. I have listened reverently to the 
service of the Mass according to the Roman 
Catholic ritual in St. Peter's at Rome, and I 
have heard a choir of a hundred men and 
boys chanting the service of the Greek church 
in the Cathedral of the Kremlin at Moscow. 
I have heard the call to prayer from the min- 
arets of the Mosque of St. Sophia in Con- 
stantinople and I have watched the faces of 
devout Jews at the fragment of the old tem- 
ple enclosure at the Jews' Wailing Place in 
Jerusalem. I have studied the stolid faces 
of the Chinese in their joss-houses in old 
Shanghai, and I have seen the faces of the 
Buddhist priests as they conducted worship 
in the great Hongwanji temples in Japan. 
And although in every case the mode of 
worship and the language in which it was 
offered were alien to me, I felt in my own 
heart a sense of sympathy with it all. There 

2 9 



The Honor of the Church 

was in me, as in them, the same feeling of 
dependence upon a higher Power, the same 
sense of kinship with the Eternal, the same 
hunger for a closer relation to the divine 
Being who can minister to our good. How 
strange and abnormal I should have felt had 

I never shared in that hunger of the heart! 
How much it means when we stand up as 

Christians of every type and of all lands, say- 
ing to that sordid materialism which is the 
bane of so much of our modern life, " We 
believe in God the Father Almighty and in 
Jesus Christ his Son our Lord. We believe 
in the Holy Ghost, the Author and Giver of 
life which is life indeed"! How much it 
means when we say in corporate fashion to 
those petty individuals who are too blind to 
recognize the value of associated effort, 

II We believe in the Holy Catholic Church, 
the communion of saints"! How much it 
means when we say to that mode of life 
which crawls when it might walk in high 
places with its head up, " We believe in the 
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the 
dead, and the life everlasting"! And into 
all this richer experience we enter when we 
become members of the body of Christ, shar- 
ing in the confessions and the worship, in 
the aspiration and the service of the church 
of the living God. 

30 



Building the Church 

Here is the church of Christ also proclaim- 
ing those standards which are ultimate and 
final. " A new commandment give I unto 
you, that ye love one another as I have loved 
you." It is a final word. " Ye therefore 
shall be perfect as your father in heaven is 
perfect." It is a final word. " Because he 
lives we shall live also and always." It is 
a final word. " It doth not yet appear what 
we shall be, but we know that when we see 
him as he is we shall be like him." The 
church would have every man wear nothing 
less than the likeness of the Most High. Its 
prayer is that we might all be strengthened 
with might by his spirit in the inner man. 
Its supreme interest is character. 

Now you will all agree that the sorest need 
of the world is to be found at this point. In 
the summer of 1914 the countries in Central 
Europe had brains enough, wealth enough, 
brawn enough, to have ushered in the mil- 
lennium if millenniums ever could be ushered 
in by those agencies alone. They had enough 
of huge armanents, of secret diplomacy and 
of that spirit of competition which is supposed 
to be " the life of trade." The sad fact was 
that they did not have character enough, and 
so what they did usher in was not the mil- 
lennium but seven long, sad years of perdition, 
— and the end is not yet. Wise enough, 

3i 



The Honor of the Church 

rich enough, strong enough, but not good 
enough to do what they ought to have done! 

Here at this hour in our own land we have 
resources enough, man -power enough, organ- 
izing administrative ability enough, to cover 
the country with peace and prosperity as the 
waters cover the sea. But we have not char- 
acter enough. We have not enough of the 
sense of social justice, enough of respect for 
the rights and interests of the other man and 
the other class, enough of the spirit of good- 
will in which alone our problems can be solved, 
enough of the sense of obligation to the com- 
mon good. So in place of peace and pros- 
perity we have unrest and in many quarters 
unreason, and a spirit steadily at work be- 
neath the surface of our American life which 
is a menace to the health of the nation. We 
are not good enough to do what ought to be 
done. 

What an hour for an institution ordained 

of God to open the eyes of the blind, to cast 

out the devils of ill-will and to cleanse men 

from the leprosy of sordid selfishness! These 

vexed questions can never be solved on the 

basis of some more skilful form of economic 

organization or by some clever political device. 

They can only be solved upon the basis of a 

finer type of personal character and by the 

steady expression of a more social habit of 

mind. 

32 



Building the Church 

We are all members one of another, whether 
we like it or not. If one member suffers, all 
the other members suffer with it. The head, 
in the great economic order which enfolds us, 
cannot say to the feet, the highest cannot say 
to the lowest, nor the lowest to the highest, 
" We have no need of you." We can only 
advance and prosper as we advance together. 
And all this is only a roundabout way of say- 
ing what the Master said in so much better 
language, " This is the first and great com- 
mandment, ' Love God with all your heart. 
And the second is like unto it, Love your 
neighbor as yourself.' ' On these two hangs 
all there is. 

With all its present limitations I cannot 
believe that the church is altogether blind to 
that vision or indifferent to its obligation. 
Many organizations honored and beloved 
have done well. They have attacked the 
evil of the world piecemeal. They have un- 
dertaken some single item of human better- 
ment, the outlawing of the open saloon, the 
better housing of the toilers, better sanitary 
conditions in the factories, better wages for 
some group or class, the banishment of or- 
ganized and profitable vice. All this is good ; 
but the church is the one institution on earth 
which has had courage enough to stand up 
and accept the social ideal in its entirety. 

33 



The Honor of the Church 

It looks up into the face of the perfect God 
and says, " Thy will be done on earth." 
It will never cease to offer that prayer nor 
to hold fast to that high resolve until that 
sublime end shall have been achieved. And 
it is able to hold true to that course because 
it puts first that which is first — it makes 
character its supreme interest. 

In any community there are many common 
interests. Some of them are social, some 
industrial, some political and some educa- 
tional. High up among them stands the 
church of Christ, pledged to the spiritual in- 
terests of the people. It is there to deepen 
their sense of the presence of God. It is 
there to uncover for them profounder sources 
of motive and stimulus, so that the zest and 
relish of living may not fail when those years 
come where so many people say, " We have 
no pleasure in them." It is there to inter- 
pret and consecrate all these social contacts 
which furnish the raw material out of which 
character is built. It is there to steady 
and strengthen the common aspiration for 
that which is just, true, and clean, for that 
which is honorable, reputable and lovable. 
It seeks for nothing less than to bring the 
actions of men " up to the style and manners 
of the sky." 

It is a time for every church to be alive 

34 



Building the Church 

and alert. " Every branch that beareth 
not fruit he taketh away." There is neither 
room nor soil in the garden of God for fruit- 
less lives. " Every branch that beareth 
fruit he purgeth that it may bear more fruit." 
During the last seven years the nations have 
been clipped and pruned; they have been 
purged and sprayed by the searching disci- 
pline through which they have passed. Now 
that " the staleness of those soft, sleek, sordid 
years of low content " has gone, the hour has 
struck for a spiritual advance. There is a 
loud call for a more abundant supply of all 
those fine fruits of the spirit. And it is the 
task of the church which the Lord is building 
afresh in these searching times to increase 
the yield of fruit on every field of human 
interest. 

It is a sacred task to build a building where 
some church may meet and minister to the 
souls of men. When a group of people have 
thus lodged in brick and stone, in stained 
glass and carved wood, their abiding concern 
for the higher life of the community, they 
have achieved something upon which they 
may well look back in thoughtful, reverent 
joy. 

But finer still is the high privilege of acting 
with Him in building the church itself. To 
have even the humblest part in creating 

35 



The Honor of the Church 

that body of people who are fitly framed to- 
gether by a common purpose and are com- 
pacted into a sacred fellowship by that which 
every joint supplieth is the highest sort of 
privilege. When that great work is in pro- 
gress we have indeed a building of God, a 
house not made with hands, a habitation of 
the Spirit, eternal in the realm of those 
values which endure. 

" Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll, 
Leave thy low-vaulted past, 
Let each new temple nobler than the last 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 



36 



BELONGING TO THE CHURCH 



Ill 
Belonging to the Church 

HOW much is suggested by that easy 
current phrase, " I belong to the 
church. " My hand belongs to me 
as a part of my body. It sustains an organic, 
vital relation to the body and to all the other 
members of that body. It derives its sus- 
tenance from the vital processes operating 
in the body. It acts in the light of all that 
stands revealed by the eyes of that body. 
It enjoys the guidance afforded by the head 
of the body. It shares in the hurt and loss 
or in the honor and gain which belong to the 
body. 

In like manner, when " I belong to the 
church," I become a member of the body of 
Christ. I belong to him who is the Head of 
the church. I sustain an organic relation 
to all the other members of his body. I am 
cleansed, fed and renewed by the currents 
of influence which are flowing through the 
body of Christ. I stand at attention under 
his eye, ready to execute the commands of 
my Head. I find myself an heir of God, a 
joint heir with Christ in all the high privilege 
and lasting glory which are the portion of 
his body. What finer thing can be said of 

39 



The Honor of the Church 

any individual than to assert, in all the full- 
ness of meaning which the phrase denotes, 
" He belongs to the church." 

It was the greatest of the Apostles who 
maintained that the church is the body of 
Christ. It is the place where the spirit of 
Christ resides. When Jesus was here his 
mind and heart ranged freely across wide 
areas of human need and up to the final 
source of our help. But behind and within 
that face and form, which his friends came to 
know and to love, his spirit was at home, 
resident, domiciled, established. Those early 
Christians saw and felt the glory of the eter- 
nal in the face of Jesus Christ. Likewise the 
church, which is his body, becomes the abiding 
place for his spirit. Where two or three, 
where a thousand or ten thousand are gath- 
ered together in his name as a true church, 
there he is in the midst. His spirit is domi- 
ciled in his church. 

The church is the place where his spirit is 
best revealed. When Jesus was here on 
earth, men saw not his spirit — no man 
hath seen a spirit at any time. But in the 
bearing and movements of his body, in the 
deeds done in the body and in the expression 
on his face, his spirit stood revealed. In 
these days the spirit of Christ is revealed 
mainly in the attitude and bearing, in the 

40 



Belonging to the Church 

deeds, the moods and the utterances of his 
church. 

The church is the main instrument by which 
Christ works. When Jesus moved along 
the lanes of Galilee and streets of Jerusalem, 
the eyes of his body sought out human need, 
his ears heard and reported the cry for help, 
his feet bore him upon errands of mercy, 
and his hand reached out to lift, to heal and 
to bless. Here again the church as his body 
becomes the main tool of his achievement. 
Its members become eyes to see opportuni- 
ties for service and ears to hear the words 
of appeal. They become minds to frame and 
lips to utter the gospel of hope. They be- 
come feet to go upon his errands of recovery, 
and hands, open, outstretched and ungloved 
in their offer of help. 

The church is the converting, transforming 
agency whereby the raw material of his 
kingdom is transformed into the living fibre 
of his body. The body of Jesus took up and 
assimilated the food offered him in Galilee 
and in Judea, to transform that substance 
into forms of energy which spake and loved 
and lived in that benign presence. The 
church reaches out and apprehends the prof- 
fered material in all those unrenewed lives. 
It transforms them by the grace given it 
by the divine indwelling. This ordinary 

41 



The Honor of the Church 

substance of our common humanity, often- 
times of the earth earthy, is thus changed 
into finer forms of energy where one may see 
the kingdom of God coming with power and 
great glory. 

In the face of all the high privilege, en- 
nobling obligations, and exalted usefulness 
suggested by the Apostle's conception of the 
true function of organized religion, how 
much it means to belong to the church! 
The body is one and hath many members, 
and all members have not the same office. 
There are diversities of gifts, but the same 
spirit. There are differences of administra- 
tion, but the same Lord. There are varieties 
of operation, but it is the same God who 
worketh. The head cannot say to the feet, 
the highest cannot say to the lowest, " I 
have no need of you." The feeble and in- 
conspicuous are necessary for his complete 
design, as well as those members upon whom 
he has bestowed more abundant honor. We 
suffer or we rejoice together. We halt or we 
advance as consenting and contributing mem- 
bers of one common endeavour. We, as 
11 members in particular " of the church of 
the living God, are indeed the body of Christ. 

The Greek word in the New Testament 
translated church means literally " the called 
out." Called out from a sinful world; called 

42 



Belonging to the Church 

out from the ranks of the spiritually indiffer- 
ent; called out from the disorganized mass 
of more or less aspiring souls! Called out 
into a way of life which is life indeed, into 
the path of an ascending and unending ser- 
vice, into a mode of organized spiritual effort, 
against which the gates of hell shall not pre- 
vail " Called to be saints ' at last, when 
this age-long process of self-realization shall 
finally express and embody the perfect will 
of God. 

The church is differentiated from other 
useful but less worthy organizations — base- 
ball nines, fire companies, lodges of Elks 
— by three distinguishing marks. It is made 
up of those who have been called out by a 
certain agency, the spirit of God. There is 
in the church something superhuman. They 
have been called out for a certain purpose, 
the establishment of the kingdom of God on 
earth, the sway and rule of the divine Spirit 
in all our human affairs. And they are 
people possessed of a certain intent, to live 
after the spirit and method of Him who is 
the Head of the church. In their spiritual 
immaturity the members of the church are 
for the most part but taking the initial steps 
in this endeavor, but they must be sincere in 
their fundamental purpose. 

I am a high churchman, in that I would 

43 



The Honor of the Church 

exalt the importance and value of organized 
religion. It is not necessary to believe in 
the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration or 
in the Real Presence in the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper because one would emphasize 
the value of associated effort in worship and 
service. We have lost ground as Protestants 
by minimizing in many of our moods and 
phrases the value of the church. The Roman 
Catholic priest urges his people to come to 
the appointed place of worship, not only at 
the stated masses on Sunday but for personal 
devotion on week days, when they offer their 
prayers. We have more commonly taught 
our people to believe that it is just as easy 
to pray in any sort of a place as in the House 
of Prayer. They have come to believe, 
many of them, that on the Lord's Day they 
can " worship God in nature," as they put 
it in high-sounding phrase, meaning that 
they spend their Sundays habitually on the 
golf links or racing about the country in 
high-priced motor cars. The Roman Catho- 
lic has emphasized the power of the stated 
and customary use of the ordinances of wor- 
ship. We find happy-go-lucky Protestants 
who scarcely know what they are. The 
Roman Catholic has emphasized the value 
of the sacraments as channels of divine grace. 
We have sometimes allowed the Communion 

44 



Belonging to the Church 

service to be so lightly esteemed and so awk- 
wardly celebrated that followers of Christ 
felt that they could " take it or leave it " 
as they chose, without in any way affecting 
the depth and strength of their spiritual lives. 

How it lifts a man out of the sense of petti- 
ness in a purely private and apparently 
insignificant moral performance when he 
belongs to the church! He gains at once the 
sense of participating in an august and far- 
reaching spiritual enterprise. He is now a 
consenting and a contributing member of 
that body of Christ whose mighty redemp- 
tive ministry is destined at last to fill the 
earth with the glory of God as the waters 
cover the sea. He feels his own individual 
will to be good and to do good now heavily 
reinforced because it is merged and blended 
with the infinite Good-Will of the living God. 
He has openly formed an alliance offensive 
and defensive with One who is out to win, 
with One who has at his command all the 
forces needed for a final and glorious victory. 

Here was a private soldier in the Great 
War. He was just one more Thomas Atkins, 
scarcely to be distinguished from several 
millions of other men just like him. What 
kept up his morale? What made him strong 
to do, to bear, and to resist? 

He might be marching wearily toward the 

45 



The Honor of the Church 

front through rain or sleet. He might be 
standing guard in one of the myriad trenches, 
knee-deep in mud and filth. He might be 
imperiling his life more directly in some lis- 
tening post out in No Man's Land. He did 
not know just how the campaign might be 
going at every point, nor just how far his own 
bit of courage and fidelity might affect the 
final outcome. 

But he was a unit in a great army made up 
of just such insignificant units, utterly insig- 
nificant if taken apart from the great whole, 
yet mighty when viewed in a comprehensive 
way. And he knew that in command of 
that army and of all the armies there was a 
man at Headquarters named Foch, who did 
know how the campaign was going. He 
knew that at Headquarters there was a man 
in command of all those diverse forces and 
that he was directing them with intelligence 
and purpose. He, as a private soldier, might 
or might not come back alive, but the army 
would persist. His knowledge of this asso- 
ciated effort made him feel sure that ultimate 
victory was certain. His faith in Head- 
quarters and in the total strength of the army 
to which he belonged made him strong. As 
one of those private soldiers in our own Amer- 
ican army said in my hearing, " We did not 
know much of the time where we were going 

4 6 



Belonging to the Church 

or what we were doing, but one thing we did 
know, and that was we would beat them." 

Hear, then, my parable! Here I stand in 
some out-of-the-way spot in the great world's 
life! I see the forces of evil everywhere, 
active, potent, and threatening. I am not 
wise enough to know just how the battle is 
going at every point. I am not wise enough 
to know just how far my own bit of courage 
and fidelity, my own prayer and self-sacri- 
fice may count in the final result. But I am 
fighting with the army of the Lord of hosts. 
I feel all the while that at Headquarters there 
is One who does know all this and infinitely 
more. I know that at Headquarters there is 
One who is directing these forces, seen and 
unseen, with intelligent purpose. He has at 
his command energies adequate for a glorious 
victory. When I am baffled or depressed I 
can still feel that if I will but do my own bit 
of duty in my own small sector of the moral 
field, I can leave the final result with him. 
And that sense of participation in a vast 
spiritual enterprise with the army and with 
him keeps up my morale. The very fact 
that " I belong to the church " of the living 
God makes me strong to do, to bear, and to 
resist. 

In thinking, then, of the church and of the 
obligations of church membership, of the 

47 



The Honor of the Church 

activities and of the interests of some local 
church, it is good to think one's way on 
through to that which is fundamental and 
ultimate. Do not stop at the little way- 
stations along the road your mind will traverse, 
offering your conscience small excuses and 
trivial evasions of duty; go right on up to 
the end of the line When you thank God 
for your daily bread and for all your other 
mercies and privileges, do not stop with the 
bread. Keep straight on until you are face 
to face with the Giver of all good gifts, the 
Author and Director of all the forces which 
make for good. 

" For back of the loaf is the snowy flour; 
And back of the flour, the mill; 
And back of the mill, the wheat and the shower 
And the sun and the Father's Will." 



48 



RECRUITING THE CHURCH 



IV 
Recruiting the Church 

THE care of a parish means a great deal 
more than taking good care of the 
church members turned over to the 
minister by his predecessor in the pastoral 
office. It was a meager ideal which a preacher 
once announced when he said that his idea 
of success was " to keep the pews full and a 
smile on the treasurer's face." He might 
easily have achieved that end and still have 
had upon his hands a church as lifeless as 
Lazarus was when the Master came. 

The process of elimination goes forward 
steadily in the visible body of Christ as in 
every other organism. There are removals 
by transfer to other parishes and there are 
removals by the hand of death. There are 
inroads from the world, the flesh, and the 
devil which rob the church of some of its 
members. Guard against this process as 
best we may, losses will occur. The prudent 
business man is compelled each year to 
" write off " a certain percentage for " the 
depreciation of the plant.' ' And in a less 

Si 



The Honor of the Church 

material but no less real way, so must the 
man who deals with values of a higher sort. 

This process of depletion is to be matched 
and over-matched by the process of replen- 
ishing. Unless the church is growing, it is 
dying. The wise mother weighs her baby 
every week. If there is no increase in weight 
she knows that there is something wrong. 
The enlistment of new members in the church 
stands, therefore, in the very forefront of in- 
terest. We may emphasize the importance 
of " applied Christianity " in our social, 
industrial and political life, but, if we are 
to have that applied Christianity, we must 
take steps to have an adequate, substantial 
and constantly growing supply of Christianity 
to be applied. Lincoln used to say, " If I 
am to be President of the United States, I 
must see to it first of all that there is a United 
States to be President of." 

There is a keen zest attached to the work of 
recruiting members which no other section 
of Christian activity can show in equal mea- 
sure. It is carrying the war into the enemy's 
country and winning victories over him out 
of hand. It has the high significance which 
must ever attach to the inducing of self- 
determining lives to change their final alle- 
giance. It develops in those who undertake 
it a deeper consecration, that they may feel 

52 



Recruiting the Church 

themselves in some measure worthy to make 
their appeals as ambassadors of Christ to 
those whom they would see reconciled to God. 
The recruiting of the church has in it all the 
chivalry of Christian service at its best. 

The very difficulty of it offers an effective 
challenge to the powers of every one who 
undertakes it, be he minister or layman. It 
is comparatively easy to stand up, safely 
barricaded by a high pulpit and by the sacred 
conventions of a public service, at a safe 
distance from the publicans and sinners, and 
bombard them with texts and with well- 
phrased appeals for them to undertake the 
Christian life. It is quite another thing to 
come down to the ordinary level of every-day 
life and meet them at arm's length, man to 
man, and there seek to induce them to make 
Christian duty their supreme choice in life. 
It is calculated to induce humility in the most 
cocksure man who ever ascended the pulpit 
stairs. Dealing with people where they can 
talk back, seeking to awaken the indifferent, 
to win the hostile, and to infuse new purpose 
into the reluctant, sends a man to his Bible 
and to his knees to renew his strength by 
waiting upon the source of all strength. 

The work of recruiting members keeps the 
heart of the church warm and its life strong. 
You may set it down as an assured fact that 

53 



The Honor of the Church 

the church which is evangelistic in spirit 
and purpose is not falling to pieces from dry- 
rot or spiritual coldness. The very process 
of drawing in from the fringes of its influence 
those who are not far from the kingdom of 
God but still on the outer edge of Christian 
life keeps the heart and center of the church 
close knit and compact. 

The unceasing effort of a faithful minister 
to bring others to Christ attaches his own 
people to him as nothing else will do. The 
Christian woman who sees her pastor intent 
upon inducing her husband to become a 
Christian, or seeking to win her boys to Chris- 
tian living, does not care two straws whether 
or not he calls upon her at frequent intervals 
to drink tea and hear about the health of her 
canary birds. She sees that he is about his 
Master's business, and she likes him amazingly 
for this harder task he is seeking to accom- 
plish. 

The high and dry Pharisees twitted the 
disciples upon the fact that their Master 
ate with publicans and sinners. He replied 
with those Parables of the Lost Sheep, the 
Lost Coin, the Lost Boy, which will be known 
and loved when the critics have been buried 
in oblivion beyond the hope of any sort of 
resurrection. He also remarked with deli- 
cate but effective irony that he was a physi- 

54 



Recruiting the Church 

cian and that his business, therefore, was 
mainly with the sick. " They that are 
whole have no need of the physician, but they 
that are sick. I came not to call the righteous 
but sinners to repentance.' ' How delicious 
it was ! " Whole/ ' indeed — when they 
were stretched out at full length on beds of 
wrong-doing, unable to lift their hands or 
their heads to the furtherance of righteousness. 
11 Not the righteous " — when he knew, and 
they knew, and all who heard him knew, that 
those supercilious faultfinders were at the 
longest remove from being " righteous''! 
There was, as a matter of cold fact, more 
hope for the publicans and harlots than there 
was for them. It was the glory of his life 
to go forth and enlist in the high task of 
bringing in the kingdom of God, those who 
had made moral failure. And in heaven 
there was more joy over the repentance of 
one such than there was over all the prudent 
performances of those who esteemed them- 
selves too good to need repentance. 

The one who undertakes to recruit the 
membership of the church will naturally 
keep his purpose clearly in mind and actually 
in sight. " Fishers of men " — he is not 
there just to pass the time of day with the 
fish or to show them he is not afraid of deep 
water because he, too, has learned to swim. 

55 



The Honor of the Church 

He is there to catch them if he can and enlist 
them in a finer mode of life. He counts that 
wise and warm spirit of evangelism as the 
crowning asset on his trial balance as it is in 
the make-up of any minister of Christ. 

This high task of winning others furnishes 
the most wholesome exercise available for 
the membership of the church. If they 
would " grow in grace," let them do as the 
early Christians did. When Andrew had 
found the Messiah, he at once found his 
brother Simon and brought him to Christ. 
Philip found the Messiah and then promptly 
found Nathaniel and brought him. And 
each " next man " passed it on to some other 
" next." So the Christian movement grew 
by the immediate contagion of life upon life. 

Once, and only once, do we read that the 
One who was known as " a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief " actually " exulted 
in spirit.' ' It was not in the hour when he 
stood on the mount of the Transfiguration, 
his face shining like the sun in its strength. 
It was not when he stood on the Horns of 
Hattin uttering the Sermon on the Mount, 
to go echoing its way down the ages with its 
serene message of help. It was not when he 
rode along the streets of his capital city, 
receiving the popular acclaim and having 
hosannas showered upon him as a King who 

56 



Recruiting the Church 

came in the name of the Lord. It was in the 
hour when " the other seventy " unordained 
and unnamed disciples returned with an 
encouraging report as to what they had been 
accomplishing by the power of the truth he 
had given them. " In that hour Jesus ex- 
ulted in spirit " and cried out that he had seen 
11 Satan falling like lightning from heaven." 
The success of those modest disciples in 
winning their fellows to a new allegiance 
became to him an earnest of the glorious 
consummation when every knee should bow 
and every tongue confess that his mode of 
life had the right to rule in the lives of men. 

In the best sense every service of the church 
may be made evangelistic. This does not 
mean that on every such occasion the minis- 
ter will undertake to declare the whole plan 
of salvation, or that he will in set terms urge 
upon his hearers repentance for sin, and sav- 
ing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It does 
not mean that at every service he will ask 
people to stand up, or to raise their hands, 
to sign cards, or to come forward for prayers. 
But every rightly ordered service may be so 
conducted that in its steady outreach, it 
will be urging upon the minds and conscience 
of all who come the naturalness, the reason- 
ableness and the winsomeness of the Chris- 
tian life. It will hold before their gaze the 

57 



The Honor of the Church 

high privilege and the sacred obligation of 
Christian living in such a way as to be mov- 
ing them steadily in that general direction. 

When a man falls from the top of a ten- 
story building, the power of gravitation mani- 
fests itself in one way. The body of the 
man comes to the pavement in the twinkling 
of an eye, and when it strikes the result is 
tragic. The power of gravitation manifests 
itself no less truly but in a very different way 
in its steady pull upon the Muir glacier, 
causing it to move only a few feet perhaps in 
the course of a year. One's whole ministry 
and the entire work of the Christian church 
may likewise exercise a steady pull upon the 
lives of men, drawing them into the Kingdom, 
in ways less showy and dramatic, but more 
effective oftentimes than the striking efforts 
of some notable and noisy evangelistic cam- 
paign. 

When the work of recruiting is restricted 
to a special series of meetings or to one par- 
ticular season of the year, many people will 
be missed. Like the Jews of old, they will 
not be in the right mood at that particular 
season to know the time of their visitation 
or to recognize the fact that the kingdom of 
God has come nigh unto them. In a rural 
church near my father's home in Iowa, a 
young man was once converted in the month 

58 



Recruiting the Church 

of July. It was much remarked upon, and 
one of my father's neighbors made the 
observation: " I hear that Theodore Craven 
was converted over at Zion Baptist Church 
last Sunday night. I never heard before of 
a man getting religion in July." He felt 
that " getting religion " was something like 
raising watermelons. It could only be done 
at a certain season. " The tree of life," 
however, bore her fruit of ministering to 
human need " every month, " and the very 
" leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
the nations.' ' Any service and every service 
may well be saving in the spirit it maintains 
and in the atmosphere it creates. " Today, if 
you will hear his voice. Now is the accepted 
time. Now is the day of salvation/' 

Every service may be clearing up intellec- 
tual difficulties and replacing mistaken con- 
ceptions with a more valid interpretation of 
the eternal verities. Every service may be 
shedding light upon those moral confusions 
where some people think that they are not 
good enough to join the church, and others 
feel that they are so good already as to need 
no more vital relation to the spiritual forces 
at work in the society where they stand. 
Every service may be lifting up and reveal- 
ing Him who is able to draw all men unto 
him if they can only be brought to see him 

59 



The Honor of the Church 

as he is. The compelling vision of the liv- 
ing Christ will awaken an impulse to be 
" like him " which will determine the issue. 
Every service may be paving the way for 
that supreme and final decision which carries 
the soul from darkness into light, to go no 
more out. 

In this work of recruiting the church, I 
would name as the first, the best and the 
most effective method, the method of per- 
sonal evangelism. There was one occasion 
in the Early Church, the day of Pentecost, 
when three thousand were added to the 
church. But they were already " devout 
men from every nation under heaven " — 
devout enough to have made the long jour- 
ney up to Jerusalem to participate in that 
great festival of the Jewish church. In their 
case it was a theological rather than a moral 
conversion. They kept straight on as " de- 
vout men," only now they had enrolled 
themselves under the leadership of Jesus as 
the Messiah. There was one such day that 
men might hope and pray for the exceptional 
outpouring of the divine spirit, but only one, 
lest the church should entrust its entire life 
to these wholesale efforts. 

" The good shepherd calleth his own sheep 
by name and leadeth them out." He was 
able to call them by name because he had 

60 



Recruiting the Church 

put himself in close personal relations with 
each one. It was that intimate touch which 
made his call effective. The drag-net takes 
of every kind and all at once, but the results 
are mixed. When the inevitable sorting 
out has taken place upon the shore, there 
must be entered up a substantial and dis- 
heartening discount of the first impression 
made as to the success of the effort, by an 
actual appraisal of the net result. The hook- 
and-line method is slower and surer when the 
final returns are all in. 

In my own ministry I find in looking over 
my parish records that those years when I 
made the most calls and talked personally 
with the largest number of individuals were 
the years w^hich showed the largest number 
of people added to the church on confession 
of faith. This might not hold true in every 
man's ministry the country over. I am glad 
to believe that many ministers have proven 
themselves better harvesters of spiritual re- 
sults than I have been. Even so, the method 
of personal evangelism has so much to say 
for itself as to outclass and outlast all rival 
methods. 

Hand-picked fruit keeps better through the 
long winter than does the fruit which was 
shaken from the tree and picked up from 
the ground. Hand-picked converts have 

61 



The Honor of the Church 

a way of holding out and of being found in 
their places five years later to an extent not 
always to be realized among those who were 
brought in by the more miscellaneous effort 
of shaking the tree in a mighty, monster 
aggregation attempt at the wholesale evan- 
gelism of an entire city. 

Fewer sensitive souls are hurt and repelled 
by the quiet method of evangelism than is 
likely to be the case where the rough-and-ready 
methods of a professional evangelist are im- 
posed upon the community. When the work 
is done in this apostolic way, Andrew find- 
ing Peter, and Philip making himself res- 
ponsible for Nathaniel, the taste of the peo- 
ple is not coarsened and vitiated, which is a 
common result of those bizarre methods of 
some evangelists which are deemed impera- 
tive for the hasty filling of a huge tabernacle 
with a crowd eager for another thrill. 

In the less showy method of evangelism 
there will commonly be less of the loose and 
dogmatic statement carelessly but often suc- 
cessfully employed for the sake of some im- 
mediate effect and leaving some ugly prob- 
lems for the patient pastors who stand by 
to pick up the fragments which remain. 
The ethical teaching put forth by settled 
pastors and by faithful laymen in their work 
of recruiting is likely to be better balanced, 

62 



Recruiting the Church 

and the Biblical interpretation is apt to be 
more competent, than is the case when fer- 
vent and dramatic exhorters, lacking both 
the thorough training and the cultural back- 
ground for such a sacred undertaking, come 
swiftly upon the scene for a brief and incon- 
clusive effort. 

We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that 
in the last twenty-five years the educational 
forces in this country have been gaining 
steadily upon the ecclesiastical forces. We 
recognize this gain in the larger amounts of 
money which they are able to secure from 
thoughtful people for the prosecution of their 
work; in the larger hold they have obtained 
upon the popular esteem, and in the number 
and quality of the young men and women 
they can enlist in their service. These edu- 
cational forces have emphasized " the pro- 
cess M rather than " the crisis.' ' They have 
rested their entire weight upon the value of 
the slow, steady, well-considered process, 
rather than upon the jerks and spurts of some 
showy crisis. In the light of their experience 
in making this splendid gain, we may well 
believe that the way of Christian nurture 
in its best and broadest sense, the way of 
pastoral and personal evangelism, is " the 
more excellent way." If the churches had 
been steadily doing their best along these 

63 



The Honor of the Church 

lines, the demand for those other swifter 
but less worthy methods might never have 
arisen. Why not do this great work in the 
best way — that is, in Christ's way? 



64 



ADAPTING THE CHURCH 



V 
Adapting the Church 

THE form of church life in the matter 
of polity, of worship, of activity had 
best spring from a careful survey and 
an intelligent recognition of the needs of 
the field where the church is doing its work. 
We shall find along that line a surer guide to 
spiritual effectiveness than in any sort of 
blind reliance upon some preconceived notion 
of what the church should be and do. 

It may be that the early churches de- 
scribed in the Book of Acts were congrega- 
tional in their polity. I use the term not in 
any sectarian sense, but merely as indicating 
that simplest and most democratic form of 
government adopted by several branches of 
the church of Christ. It is my own per- 
sonal belief that those early churches were 
congregational. But this is not a matter of 
large significance. If a church governed by 
elders like the Presbyterian Church, or a 
church governed by bishops like the Epis- 
copal and the Methodist Churches, or a church 
governed by a pope like the Roman Catholic 
Church, shows itself better suited to serve the 

67 



The Honor of the Church 

spiritual interest of a community, a state, 
or a nation, as determined by years of in- 
structive experience, then it would have high 
warrant for claiming the divine sanction upon 
its particular kind of polity. 

The church, whatever its form of organiza- 
tion may be, is never to be regarded as an 
end in itself. The church is just a tool in 
the hands of the Holy Spirit, to be employed 
in the establishing of the kingdom of God on 
earth. The tool must of necessity be shaped 
with reference to the work to be done. It 
is pathetic always to see some ecclesiastic 
expend his time and strength in forging, 
polishing and sharpening his tool according 
to some dogmatic conception of his own, 
without ever asking himself in any definite 
way what he is to do with it. The man of 
sense does not whet his scythe all day — he 
cuts grass. The wise pastor is not merely 
intent upon keeping the wheels of his eccle- 
siastic machine polished and turning — his 
eyes and his mind are upon some worth}/ prod- 
uct fit for the garners of the Lord. 

In appraising the usefulness of any church 
the idea of usefulness cannot be conceived 
in any narrow sense. The long-drawn-out 
discussion as to the respective value of " in- 
stitutional " and " inspirational " churches 
has been in the main a waste of words and a 

68 



Adapting the Church 

beating of the air. It is so easy and so futile 
to claim that the first type of church is 
" practical' ' and the other type only "theo- 
retical." The church which has evening 
classes, men's clubs and boys' clubs, a gym- 
nasium and a swimming pool, a sewing 
school and a day nursery, and all the other 
activities belonging to full-orbed institutional 
religious effort, is sometimes put down as 
" a practical, useful, serving church." But 
there may be a community where no one of 
these forms of activity is "indicated," as 
the physicians say in their careful diagnosis. 
The church which receives into its doors on 
Sunday morning a congregation of men and 
women, young men and maidens, hardened, 
coarsened, disheartened, paganized by a week 
of rough contact with the world, the flesh, 
and the devil, and by its appointed services 
sends them back to their homes and to their 
toil renewed and enriched, ennobled and 
sweetened, ready to take up all their tasks 
with fresh zest and relish and do them better, 
carrying on serenely — that church has done 
something intensely practical. ^ 

The church which takes a company of 
cold, hard, proud, self-satisfied people and 
humbles them, softens them, leads them to 
become as little children in their Father's 
house, has done a great piece of work. The 

69 



The Honor of the Church 

church which takes a set of rigid, uncom- 
promising individuals, who pride themselves 
on standing each one on his own two feet, 
neither asking nor giving odds, who are 
saying by their mood and bearing, if not in 
so many words, " Every man for himself and 
the devil take the hindmost " — the church 
which takes them and produces within 
them by years of patient, heroic effort the 
social habit of mind and the readiness to 
fix their hearts upon social ideals as the only 
worthy object of spiritual aspiration, has 
given a good account of itself. The church 
which in the course of a winter converts one 
strong young man from a life of wrong-doing 
or of spiritual indifference to a life of sus- 
tained and conscientious Christian effort 
has written its name on the walls of the City 
of God. It has paid for itself for all time. 
It may well reap royalties of spiritual satis- 
faction during all the rest of its history from 
the splendid service of that man who was 
there brought out of darkness into light. 

The power-house does not move about the 
city in a hurried, restless desire to be u use- 
ful." It does not carry laborers to the fac- 
tories, merchants to their stores, children 
to their schools, or worshipers to the church. 
The power-house stands there in stolid fashion, 
some would say, upon its own appointed 

70 



Adapting the Church 

plot of ground, leaving all these practical 
lines of usefulness untouched. But it fur- 
nishes power to the street-cars as they carry- 
people about the streets. The church which 
is steadily recruiting the supply of Christian 
impulse in the community, so that moral 
dynamic flows evenly, steadily, and strongly 
along all the wires which stretch out through 
the life of the community, is rendering a ser- 
vice unspeakably precious to the higher life 
of that city. Inspiration is usefulness. 

There are churches which would do well 
to adapt their activities to the situations where 
they find themselves. Some churches are 
dying because of their unwillingness to read- 
just their methods to the task at hand. 
They could learn useful lessons from the 
study of biology. There was a time, we are 
told, when the highest forms of life here on 
earth were water-breathing marine animals 
with fins and gills. It may easily have been 
that some of these forms of life found them- 
selves stranded on the beach by some un- 
usually high tide, or that some of them in an 
ill-calculated spurt of energy may have 
flopped out of the stream upon the bank. 

Now there were three courses open to them 
in the unusual situation where they found 
themselves. First, they could give up and 
die because the environment was strange 

7i 



The Honor of the Church 

and difficult. Second, they could try to 
flop back into the stream or into some adjoin- 
ing pool, or wait for another high -tide to 
restore them to an environment with which 
they were familiar. Third, they could enter 
upon a desperate struggle for readjustment, 
many of them dying in the attempt, perhaps, 
and thus finally learn how to live under these 
changed conditions. By a long process of 
adaptation the fins became flippers and then 
the flippers became legs; the gills became 
lungs, breathing air instead of water, and there 
emerged upon the scene a new form of air- 
breathing land animal able to make its way 
on solid ground. 

However accurate or inaccurate in detail 
this brief account of the evolutionary process 
may be, it will serve as an illustration. Here 
is a down-town city church The removal 
of the substantial families which once filled 
its pews has left it in a difficult situation. 
The new environment of stores, tenement 
houses and apartment hotels, with their 
transient population, threatens its very exis- 
tence. It, too, may sell its property to some 
moving-picture enterprise, and die — this 
is always a simple, easy solution of the prob- 
lem, if indeed it be a solution. It may, on 
the other hand, sell its property and flop off 
into the suburbs and build there a new place 

72 



Adapting the Church 

of worship in the sort of environment to which 
it was accustomed in the early decades of its 
history. It may explain its change of base 
by the fact that " so many foreigners had 
moved in M and (as is often the case) ease 
its conscience by taking up more generous 
offerings for missionary work. It is some- 
times easier to deal with foreigners religiously 
at the end of a long pole, and if the pole is 
seven or eight thousand miles long, all the 
better. 

Or, as the last and best alternative, that 
church may readjust its organs and its func- 
tions by heroic effort and painful self-sacri- 
fice, and thus learn to live a new life under 
these changed conditions. This effort may 
involve a severe struggle and a great many 
bad half-hours, but where it succeeds it will 
mean also the emergence upon the scene of 
a higher form of church life. 

Here was the Madison Avenue Presby- 
terian Church in New York City! There 
was a time when its pews were filled from the 
pulpit to the front door with people of wealth, 
of culture, of social position. But there came 
a shifting of the centers of wealth and of the 
higher social activities. Madison Avenue 
was no longer " The Avenue." The plain 
people, who live in thick layers like a choco- 
late cake, came surging up the East Side 

73 



The Honor of the Church 

with their swarming tenement houses. With- 
in three or four blocks of this Madison Avenue 
Church there was to be found the most 
thickly populated section of New York City. 
This church did not die and it did not sell 
out and move to an easier environment. 
It stayed right there in its appointed place 
and on its job from the rising of the sun on 
Sunday morning to the going down of the 
same on Saturday night. 

It has had for years a gifted pastor, a man 
who came from a New York family of wealth 
and social position, one who received his 
college training at Yale and his theological 
training at Edinboro, a man who believes 
that the ideal church is to be found where 
the rich and the poor meet together on the 
basis of Christian democracy and the Lord 
is the maker of them all. This church abol- 
ished its pew system as a hindrance to Chris- 
tian democracy and instituted free seats. 
It has, along with a few trained and gifted 
singers to lead the several parts, a large 
chorus choir of voluntary singers selected 
from its own congregation. The people of 
large means and wide culture count it their 
joy and privilege to furnish a generous mea- 
sure of the sinews of war and a large share of 
the talent for leadership ; but all the people 
give according to the measure of their ability, 

74 



Adapting the Church 

that the supply may be full. The senior 
pastor has a staff of devoted men and women 
co-operating with him in the varied minis- 
tries of the church and in the activities of the 
parish. The Sunday school reaches out a 
warm hand, open, ungloved, inviting, to the 
children of all sorts and conditions, that they 
may come in, assuring them that " of such is 
the Kingdom". In the absence of the pastor 
I once supplied the pulpit of that church on 
a rainy, windy Sunday in mid-winter, and 
there were ten hundred and eighty persons 
present in the Sunday school that day, boys 
and girls, young men and maidens, men and 
women, studying that Word which makes us 
wise unto salvation and furnishes us thor- 
oughly for all good work. 

The church has built a large parish house 
next door, eleven stories high, with all manner 
of well-appointed rooms, for its constant and 
varied ministry to human need. This parish 
house has, as its crowning feature, a roof 
garden where outdoor services are held on 
hot summer nights, the worshipers lifted 
up from the dust and heat of the noisy street 
into the upper air of high privilege and look- 
ing out upon a horizon bounded by nothing 
nearer than the stars and the being of God. 
This Madison Avenue Church is alive to its 
finger-tips. The vigor and promise of its 

75 



The Honor of the Church 

work causes many men to thank God and 
take courage. 

The demand for adaptation in some coun- 
try church may be no less exacting. The 
conditions in rural life have changed less 
rapidly, perhaps, but no less decisively. The 
telephones which are ringing everywhere, 
the rural mail delivery, the swift flight of 
the automobile which has replaced the old 
reliance upon the slow movements of Dob- 
bin, have made country life another thing 
altogether. My father was a farmer for 
more than fifty years in the state of Iowa. 
He lived two hundred and fifty miles west 
of Chicago and five miles from the nearest 
railroad. In former days we got the mail, 
if the roads were not too bad, on an average 
about once a week. For the last twenty 
years of his life the Chicago morning paper 
was delivered at my father's front gate at 
eleven o'clock. The people all but univer- 
sally are taking and reading daily papers and 
magazines; they have entered into wider 
contact with the world's life. The rural 
church which once satisfied them satisfies 
them no more. 

The church in the country has a clear 
chance to point the way to more wholesome 
forms of recreation in communities where 
there is little or nothing for the diversion of 

76 



Adapting the Church 

young people between the public dance hall, 
with its undesirable associations, or the 
11 movies," with many a questionable film, 
and the Christian Endeavor prayer-meeting. 
11 It is written/ ' not in the Bible but in the 
equally authoritative book of life, that young 
people shall not live by sermons and prayer- 
meetings alone. They live by all the great 
words which proceed from the purposes of 
God. 

The social life of the church is no mere 
incidental. " The Son of Man came eating 
and drinking " — he was intensely social 
in his habit and method. He began his 
public ministry at a wedding, and when the 
refreshments gave out he helped his hosts 
to get some more. He did it so successfully 
that the general feeling among the guests 
was that they had never tasted such joy be- 
fore. The most prominent and sacred article 
of furniture in the church is a table, the place 
where we find things to eat and to drink. 
The Master would have social interest cul- 
tivated and consecrated as a means of grace. 
He would make the fellowship of old and 
young nothing less than sacramental in its 
higher possibilities. The function of the 
rural church is not to stand aloof, consum- 
ing its zeal in scolding and denouncing the 
less wholesome methods of social contact — 

77 



The Honor of the Church 

it is there to point the way and to lead in the 
direction of more wholesome means of social 
contact. 

The rural church may well provide, in its 
own appointed services and by its co-opera- 
tion with other agencies, a larger measure 
of intellectual stimulus. The summer Chau- 
tauqua, a child of the church, which owes 
its wider introduction to the co-operation 
of the Christian churches, brings a season 
of privilege to thirsty areas of our American 
life. The well-to-do farmers here and there 
are moved to unite in providing endowments 
for lecture courses which shall bring each 
winter to the community some of the best 
minds of the nation. This action has been 
prompted mainly by the influence of the 
church. In those communities which are 
not blessed with public libraries, the organ- 
izing of book clubs and magazine clubs 
which are located in and administered by the 
church brings wholesome material before the 
eyes of the many when they have finished 
their day's toil in the fields. 

The rural church which allies itself with the 
extension work of the State University and 
brings within the reach of its people instruc- 
tive and stimulating lectures and conferences 
on better methods of agriculture and horti- 
culture, better methods of dairying, of poultry 

78 



Adapting the Church 

raising and of home management, stands 
in the apostolic succession which reaches 
back to the One who went about doing good 
in all the ways he could. It may well adopt 
for its motto his own words, " I am among 
you as one who serves.' ' His service reached 
all the way from the healing of an unsightly 
leper to the utterance of the words of eternal 
life ; from the opening of the eyes of the blind 
to the manifestation of the glory he had with 
the Father before the world was; from the 
washing of the feet of those tired disciples 
to the redemption of a sinful race by his own 
blood. 

The church was made for man, and not man 
for the church. It was made for that part 
of the man which most suffers neglect else- 
where. It need not, it had best not, dupli- 
cate lines of effort which are already in suc- 
cessful operation through other agencies. 
It must be sure that the activities upon which 
it enters are calculated to meet real needs. 
The sensible people speedily draw away from 
that which is merely perfunctory. It is 
never worth while to hold meetings just for 
the sake of holding them, or for the sake of 
keeping up certain religious gestures which 
can no longer be called means of grace, just 
because " we always have." The best pro- 
gram for the life of a local church springs 

79 



The Honor of the Church 

from a careful and intelligent survey of the 
needs of the community, of the other agen- 
cies at work to meet those needs, and of the 
resources available for meeting those needs 
in some generous and satisfying manner. 
And wherever the church life is thus adapted 
to the demands of the environment it may 
well become the crowning glory of all human 
institutions. 

The true church may well aspire to an 
imperial place in the life of the community. 
The Roman Catholic Church was right in 
its purpose but, as we believe, mistaken in 
its method. It undertook by its own official 
authority to crown kings and to control 
education, and by its confessional to stretch 
forth the hand of authority into all the most 
intimate relations of our common life. Let 
the true church strive, not by the method of 
lordship and dominion, but by the pathway 
of leadership and service, to make the spiritual 
interest in our total life indeed supreme. 



80 



UNIFYING THE CHURCH 



VI 
Unifying the Church 

THE minister preaches to a congrega- 
tion, but, if he knows what he is about, 
he builds a church. The congrega- 
tion may have only one, and that a fleeting, 
interest, the desire to hear a certain gifted 
man talk or a silver-tongued choir sing. 
When the service is ended, all sense of unity 
in the mere congregation vanishes. There 
is no more cohesion than would be found 
among the men who go to a baseball game 
or who sit for a few hours as fellow passen- 
gers in the railroad train. Alas for the poor 
parson who has merely gathered a congre- 
gation. 

There are eloquent men in the pulpit who 
never advance from congregation-gatherers 
to become builders of churches. The preacher 
may be a sensationalist and the people assem- 
ble for the sake of a new thrill. He may be 
a clever lecturer on current events, and the 
people come for some more skilful appraisal 
and interpretation of the news of the week 
than would be found in the ordinary daily 
paper. He may be gifted in striking resound- 

83 



The Honor of the Church 

ing blows on behalf of certain social reforms, 
and the people interested along those par- 
ticular lines gather for the immediate feeling 
of assurance which his utterance will occasion. 

In a large American city with which I was 
familiar there was a certain popular preacher 
whose congregations were always good. His 
church was full. When he resigned he had 
been preaching in that church for ten years 
to crowds of interested and admiring people. 
The Sunday following his resignation was a 
beautiful day in the springtime. The pulpit 
of that church was supplied by one of the 
ablest ministers in the state. And by actual 
count the congregation in the morning num- 
bered fifty-seven and in the evening fifty- 
three. It was made up of that faithful nu- 
cleus of devoted people who are the final 
dependence and hope of any Christian church. 
This was all the former pastor had to show 
for his ten years of work, so far as numbers 
went. This was what he was able to turn 
over to his successor. It had been a personal 
following, with little or none of that spiritual 
cohesion which belongs to the true church. 

We had a dramatic illustration of the 
difference between a church and a congre- 
gation some years ago in the City of Brook- 
lyn. T. DeWitt Talmadge and Theodore 
Cuyler were both Presbyterian ministers. 

84 



Unifying the Church 

They worked under the same polity, declared 
their allegiance to the same creed and preached 
in the same city. Talmadge preached hab- 
itually to a large congregation. The pews 
of the great auditorium were almost uni- 
formly full. But when he resigned at the 
end of a long pastorate, the church did not 
have sufficient vitality to continue its work 
or even to maintain its existence. The church 
was disbanded and the property sold and the 
organization came to an end. It was the 
testimony of other pastors in the City of 
Brooklyn that no appreciable additions were 
made to their churches at that time by the 
transfer of members from the disbanded 
church. The Lafayette Avenue Presby- 
terian Church, on the other hand, where 
Theodore Cuyler had been engaged in con- 
structive Christian work for many years, 
abides to this hour in strength, in devotion, 
in generous service, and in splendid promise 
for the future. One of the men had gathered 
a congregation and the other had built a 
church. 

It is not enough to develop in a body of 
people the spirit of adhesion to an attrac- 
tive preacher. It is not enough to develop 
the spirit of personal loyalty to Him who is 
the Head of all the churches. There must 
come also the sense of cohesion as fellow^ 

85 



The Honor of the Church 

members of the body of Christ. The nec- 
essity for a warm, intelligent, close-knit 
and effective fellowship is instantly apparent 
when we study the marks of a true church. 

How this truth is emphasized and illumi- 
nated in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, 
which is the outstanding classic on the doc- 
trine of the church in our Holy Scriptures! 
The church is an organism, and there is to 
be found in all of its members that common 
unifying principle which gives it stability 
and strength. Now the apostle approaches 
that central truth from one angle and now 
from another, working it over under varied 
figures of speech. 

Now he phrases his truth in terms of bi- 
ology. The church is a body, the body of 
Christ, the residing place of his spirit, the re- 
vealing place of his divine nature, the instru- 
ment and agent of his holy will, as he dwells 
within it for the accomplishment of his good 
pleasure. 

Now he phrases his truth in political terms. 
He addresses the members of that church 
in Ephesus as citizens in the kingdom of 
God. " Ye were once aliens from the com- 
monwealth of Israel !" Strangers from the 
covenant of promise! Ye were outsiders, 
not under the flag, without God and without 
hope in the world! But now " ye are no 

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Unifying the Church 

more strangers and foreigners, but fellow 
citizens with the saints.' ' 

Now he phrases his truth in terms of archi- 
tecture. Ye are builded into a holy temple 
in the Lord, fitly framed together and com- 
pacted by that which every joint supplieth 
according to the effectual working in the 
measure of every part. " Ye are built upon 
the foundation of the prophets and apostles, 
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- 
stone/' as a permanent habitation of God 
through the Spirit. Every stone as a consent- 
ing member of the structure was mortared 
in by the sense of fellowship and held in 
position by the pressure of the entire wall. 

Now he phrases the same truth in terms 
taken from vocational life. " Ye are called," 
he says, " in one hope of your calling." 
He beseeches them to walk worthy of the 
vocation wherewith they are called. He 
recognizes the presence of a great variety of 
gifts — some men are best suited to be 
prophets and some apostles, some evangel- 
ists and some pastors and teachers. But 
they are all called " in one hope " of their 
common calling for the perfecting of human 
life, for the work of ministry, for the build- 
ing up of the body of Christ, until all shall 
come, in the unity of the spirit and in a grow- 
ing knowledge of the Son of God, unto the 

8 7 



The Honor of the Church 

stature of perfect manhood, according to the 
fulness of Christ. 

Now in a yet more intimate way he likens 
the fellowship of the church to the spirit of 
the home. " I bow my knees unto the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom 
the whole family in heaven and on earth is 
named.' ' Here the unifying principle is a 
common love of all for each and of each for 
all. He would have them strengthened with 
might by the spirit of Christ in the inner man. 
He would have Christ dwell in their hearts 
by faith. He would have them so rooted 
and grounded in the practice of good-will 
that they would ultimately comprehend the 
length and the breadth, the height and the 
depth of that divine love which passeth 
knowledge and be filled with all the fulness 
of God. 

How far this apostolic conception of the 
church stands above the temporary aggre- 
gation in some miscellaneous crowd which 
can be readily gathered to hear some clever 
man talk or some sweet- voiced singer sing! 
This superficial assembling of ourselves to- 
gether may have some slight value — it is 
better than nothing at all; it is better than 
having these people spend the entire day 
appointed for worship in hurried, thoughtless, 
social dissipation or in unseemly forms of 

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Unifying the Church 

recreation, but it stops far short of a true 
church. 

This sense of intelligent and affectionate 
cohesion which belongs to the church is made 
its distinctive mark. " By this shall all 
men know that ye are my disciples/' not 
that you all declare your acceptance of a 
certain system of theological belief; not that 
you have all been baptized in some particular 
way; not that you all observe some stated 
form of liturgy; not that you all are governed 
by one particular form of polity. All these 
tokens of Christian life have a certain value, 
but they are all secondary. " By this shall 
men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
love one another/ ' It was remarked of the 
early church, " How these Christians love 
one another/ ' The church which lacks this 
fine sense of fellowship is unable to stand in 
the true succession of the church of Christ. 

It must be a comprehensive fellowship. 
The esprit de corps becomes an ugly thing 
where it is employed to cement more closely 
the men and women of a single social class. 
If the church should be used to promote and 
intensify class feeling it would be profaned. 
This would be equally true whether the 
particular class which took over the church 
was rich or poor, cultured or simple, high or 
low in its social status. The rich and poor 

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The Honor of the Church 

had best meet together, not as the givers 
and receivers of alms, but as the children of 
one Father in the house of their God. The 
employers and the wage -earners need the 
sense of spiritual contact as they meet to- 
gether around one table to eat the bread 
and drink the wine of remembrance, as they 
meet to pledge their loyalty to him in mutual 
love and respect for one another. The people 
who are well endowed, well-trained intellec- 
tually and the unprivileged, untaught many 
have a mutual ministry to render to one 
another. It will be good for the college pro- 
fessor to come to closer grips with men who 
earn their bread by the work of their hands. 
It will be good for the toilers to enrich their 
lives by contact with trained minds. It 
was a joy at St. George's Church in down- 
town New York when Seth Low, the Presi- 
dent of Columbia University, was teaching 
from Sunday to Sunday a large Bible Class 
made up exclusively of men who wrought 
with their hands. 

The fellowship of the church may well be 
comprehensive in a theological sense. It is 
unfortunate where all the extreme conserva- 
tives flock off by themselves and become all 
the more tense and rigid in their conserva- 
tism by their lack of other association. It 
is equally unhappy where all the more liberal 

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Unifying the Church 

and more progressive minds in a religious 
community take French leave of those who 
have the deeper sense of values already 
gained — they are likely to become self- 
conscious and heady in their new views. 
Where the motive which impels men to enter 
the church is kept deep and strong, the 
door of entrance may be kept wide open, so 
far as theological conformity goes. The 
unity of the church is to be found in the last 
analysis in " the unity of the spirit " rather 
than in any precise agreement touching the 
details of our interpretation of those eternal 
verities which are confessedly too vast for 
any sort of final statement. 

It was my good fortune once to serve a 
church where two of the deacons stood poles 
apart in their theological opinions. They 
were noble men and they have both gone 
to their reward, so that I venture to give their 
names. Edwards C. Williams was born in 
Northampton, Massachusetts, and was named 
for the great Jonathan Edwards. He was 
more orthodox and conservative on the whole 
than was the famous theologian whose name 
he bore. He was no ignorant narrow-minded 
dogmatist. He knew what he believed and 
why he believed it, and was prepared to give 
a reason for the faith that was in him to any- 
one who asked, and to give it in clear-cut 

9i 



The Honor of the Church 

terms. He read the best books. He took 
the trouble to learn the Greek language after 
he was fifty years old so that he might read 
his New Testament in the original and combat 
his pastor's heresies, if such there should be, 
on something like equal terms. His sturdy 
righteousness was like a sample of some old 
Hebrew prophet brought down to date. 

Wallace W. Love joy was a poet and a 
dreamer who had been a theological professor 
in his earlier life. He was a man of deep and 
lovely piety, but he lived in the clouds. 
Even when he spoke in prayer-meeting his 
utterance was sometimes puzzling to the 
uninitiated. The people listened with affec- 
tionate interest, for, while they did not always 
understand what he was talking about, they 
felt so sure that he understood it all that 
they were happy. He was almost, if not 
altogether, a Unitarian in his estimate of the 
person of Christ and in other theological 
positions which he held with great tenacity. 
But the stated invitation to the communion 
service in that church, which bade " all those 
who love Our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity 
and truth " to come to the Lord's table, 
took in both deacons alike and they came 
with equal loyalty to Christ in their hearts 
and with genuine love and respect for each 
other. And as they passed up and down 

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Unifying the Church 

the aisles of the same church with the bread 
and the wine of remembrance, the people 
received the sacrament from their hands 
with gratitude and satisfaction, thanking 
God for the presence among them of Edwards 
C. Williams and of Wallace W. Lovejoy. 

It always reminded me of a scene in one 
of Ian Maclaren's stories where a rigid 
Scotch elder and a young minister fresh from 
the University of Edinboro had fallen out 
over the doctrine which was being preached 
from the pulpit of the little kirk. The young 
dominie had much to say about " Semitic 
environment " and the latest conclusions 
of the " higher criticism/ ' while the elder 
sat back in sturdy anxiety lest the Ark of the 
Covenant should be upset by unholy hands 
and the Ten Commandments all spilled out. 
They argued it out one night at great length, 
keeping nothing back for fear or for con- 
science' sake. They were both too thoroughly 
Scotch to abate one jot or one tittle of their 
convictions, and the discussion, which lasted 
until midnight, brought them nowhere. But 
before they separated they clasped hands in 
honest affection and engaged together in a 
season of prayer. And when they were on 
their knees before their Maker it was noticed 
that the only difference in their prayers was 
that the young man prayed that they might 

93 



The Honor of the Church 

keep the faith once delivered to the saints, 
and the old man prayed that the Spirit of 
Truth might lead them into all truth. 

Doctrinal discussion and personal pref- 
erence in the matter of ritual and polity 
may divide us, but we all come together in 
prayer and praise. Here is a hymn-book 
where the saints and the singers of all ages 
and of all churches have lifted up their 
hearts to the one God and Father of us all 
in grateful worship. Here in a single hymnal 
in constant use in almost any one of our 
churches are " Blest be the Tie that Binds ' 
and " I Need Thee Every Hour," written 
by Baptists! Here are " Holy, Holy, Holy, 
Lord God Almighty " and u The Church's 
One Foundation is Jesus Christ Our Lord," 
written by Episcopalians! Here are " Love 
Divine All Love Excelling " and " Jesus 
Lover of My Soul," written by a Methodist! 
Here are " Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus ' 
and " I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, Come 
Unto Me and Rest," written by Presbyte- 
rians! Here are " Lead, Kindly Light " and 
" Jerusalem, the Golden, " written by Roman 
Catholics! Here are " A Mighty Fortress 
is Our God " and " Now Thank we all Our 
God," written by Lutherans! Here are 
11 Nearer, My God, to Thee " and " In The 
Cross of Christ I Glory," written by Uni- 

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Unifying the Church 

tarians! Here are " My Faith Looks Up 
to Thee " and " O Master, Let Me Walk 
with Thee," written by Congregationalists ! 

Why should it not be so? All things are 
ours, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter; 
whether John Calvin or John Wesley or 
Adoniram Judson; whether Jonathan 
Edwards or Alexander Campbell or William 
Ellery Channing; whether Francis of Assisi 
or the Archbishop of Canterbury or General 
William Booth. All are ours, for we are 
Christ's and so were they, every man of them. 
Ours to know, ours to revere, and ours to 
love. 

The sense of fellowship in any single church 
may well extend far beyond the boundaries 
of that immediate parish. Let it include 
the past history of that local church, the 
sweet memories of the noble men and women 
who have lived in it and loved it in days 
gone by. Let it gather up into itself the 
recorection of the crises through which the 
church has passed, the great sacrifices which 
have been made on its behalf in times of 
stress, the varied and heroic service it has 
been privileged to render to the interests 
of the Kingdom. I have been told that in 
the Old South Church, Boston, there is a 
family whose ancestors have worshiped in 
that church for seven generations. Their 

95 



The Honor of the Church 

sense of high privilege and their joy in their 
church relations reaches far beyond all that 
they receive from the ministrations of its 
gifted and devoted pastor. The Lord has 
set their feet in a large place. 

The sense of fellowship must include all the 
distinctive values contributed to our total 
Christianity by the particular denomination 
in which it stands. Let every section of the 
church of Christ write its own Eleventh 
Chapter of Hebrews! If it cannot quite 
bring forward from its own roll of member- 
ship honored names which will match up 
with those of Abraham and Moses, it can 
surely offer many which will average up better 
than Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jep- 
thath, as they have wrought righteousness, 
subdued kingdoms and put to flight the armies 
of evil. Let there be written and cherished 
a book of remembrance touching those who, 
in one particular part of the vineyard of 
our Lord, " thought upon his name " and 
gave a good account of themselves in the 
use they made of the abilities with which he 
had entrusted them. 

The sense of fellowship must in its farthest 
reaches include the Holy Church Universal. 
It all belongs to us wherever we may find 
ourselves, if we are indeed members of the 
body of Christ. We are joint heirs in all 

9 6 



Unifying the Church 

the rich heritage which has come down 
through the history and achievements of 
the whole church of the living God. It is 
good to get that sense of a vaster fellowship 
in the common worship of all the members 
of the body of Christ. It will not destroy 
the loyalty of men to their own particular 
group, but it will lift them out of the narrow- 
ness of a petty sectarianism into the feeling 
of participation in an august spiritual enter- 
prise. " Let the people praise thee, O God. 
Let all the people praise thee!" Let them 
rejoice in their common fellowship in the 
Holy Church Universal, in the communion 
of saints. 



97 



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